This morning I took a special class at the Real Ryder Cycling Studio in Brentwood, CA called Cardio Core Plus. Just as the name implies, it works your core. It’s not your regular spin class because this session incorporated A LOT more turning and balancing. After a pretty tough 50 minute spin with climbs and turns, we dismounted our bikes, and went on mats in the back of the room where we did some crunches, planks, leg raises. It was so tough, I could not finish some of them. You know what? As difficult as it may be, It was my first time doing those workouts, so I won’t quit there – I’ll be back next week!
Earlier today I got an email from Avia Wildflower with an attachment called the Endorphin Report, a 34 page report, which has all the stats you could possibly think of during a race – pace, rank, strength of each stage, who you passed and when, who passed you, your splits, maps, you name it. Bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts… it’s a stat geek’s dream!
Basically shows how much I suck. No, really. Well, I don’t really care because I’m still a beginner triathlete, and that was no easy course. All that mattered to me is that I finished it! Here’s some general stats of my race:
Swim
Time: 00:58:00
Distance: 1.22 miles (1.96 KM, 2143 yards)
T1
Time: 00:06:37
Bike
Time: 04:01:33
Distance: 90.13 KM (56 miles)
T2
Time: 00:04:3
Run
Time: 02:40:27
Distance: 21.1 KM (13.1 miles)
Finish
Time: 7:51:11
Overall Rank: 1503 / 1729 (Top 86.9%)
Rank Among Males: 1151 / 1281 (Top 89.9%)
Rank Among All 30-34 Males: 224 / 245 (Top 91.4%)
Rank In Your Division: 211 / 232 (Top 90.9%)
I gotta admit, I’ve been skimping out on my midweek run practices. Last time I ran was Wildflower almost 2 weeks ago, and even before that, I’ve been swapping my runs with more swims. Right about now is where our run training (or all training in general) will be stepping up in volume, and all 3 sports must be taken seriously. Last year’s IronTEAM coach Paul gave me some pretty good advice even before the season started. He knew I came from a running background, but he told me, “You still have to pay attention to your run, don’t take it for granted.”
I’m usually good with running up until maybe the 16 mile mark, but there’s always room for improvement. Earlier today I set out to run to the boardwalk of Manhattan Beach from the office. My Garmin wasn’t charged so I just had a basic Timex watch to keep track of when I should turn back. It was just me and the pavement, enjoying the sights and sounds of a beautiful day in the South Beach. I ran for about an hour along Rosecrans, occasionally looking around appreciating some nice houses, greenery, and loved the ocean breeze. I took a light jog along the boardwalk (also taking the snapshot above), where I saw the waves hitting high but made a calming sound. I headed south on a somewhat empty boardwalk, then ran back to the office. You gotta love these midweek lunch runs because it’s one way to schedule in some workouts that doesn’t eat away from your morning or night routines. Oh wait a minute, I have to do some shoulder strength training tonight…. the day’s not over yet!
I did it! I completed my longest swim of the season! 3850 yards! the scheduled swim set for the intermediate swimmers was 4450 yards, so I guess I need to pick up the speed a bit, but I’m just so happy I surpassed the 2 mile mark! It was 2.1875 miles to be exact. Whew! It was a pretty slow start since I was getting back into the hang of things from my training break from food poisoning. It was around the 3rd set of 5x100s that I got into the rhythm. Again, I have to work on my bilateral breathing, or keeping my head down for a few strokes to prevent muscle fatigue on one side, or veering off a different direction. It’s still unbelievable I’m doing these kind of workouts – I keep flashing back to that very first practice where I was frustrated to even get halfway.
When I thought it was my body freaking out over the strenuous levels of Wildflower, I got hit with a pretty bad case of food poisoning. It all started on Tuesday, a beautiful sunny CA day, and me and my coworkers decided to have lunch at Henessy’s at the Hermosa Beach Pier. Ordered a Roast Beef Dip Sandwich. I remember one of the bites, the meat felt a little cold. I’m not really one to complain to the servers, and I just figured it they were busy and it was probably just sitting out in the kitchen waiting for the other food orders to come in. Gradually throughout the day, I was feeling a little nausea, feeling really out of it. I couldn’t concentrate in the meetings I were in, and people noticed. I was sweating, and a little dizzy. I left work a little early so I could take a nap. I took a nap on the couch, and I could feel myself heating up, sweating, but also cold at the same time. At this point, I still thought it was just sickness from the weekend. It didn’t occur to me that I had food poisoning until I was throwing up, and frequently using the restroom in the middle of the night!
I only remember being hit with food poisoning once before, the night before a trip to Portland. That night was probably worse. For the next few days, my stomach was very sensitive and I wasn’t really digesting anything. I felt weak… weak enough to pass on any IronTEAM training. I weighed myself a few days after the incident and saw I lost 6 pounds! Very unhealthy to lose that much so quickly! Still not 100%, I volunteered to do SAG for tomorrow’s practice since my system was still “unstable” for any long rides/runs. Prior to this week, the longest I’ve gone through without any activity has been 3 days, and with the look of things, this time it will be over 5 days, if this keeps up through the weekend. I considered myself on the team’s “injured list” because I don’t want to force it either. I’ll let time heal me, and I’ll just continue when I’m ready.
Since I DQ’ed at Desert Triathlon a few months ago, Wildflower Long Course was a big race for me. If I finished, I can officially call myself a “triathlete.” Although we were told that this was not our race (because Vineman is my big race), we were to treat this event as training. “Just another day at the office,” as Coach Brad would say. In more ways than one, I did though. I guess it’s from the years of marathons that I don’t get much of the pre-race jitters anymore. I’ve always looked at these events, even if it were my race I’ve been training for, as just another training, because there’s always going to be another one after that. Not too long ago, we had our training weekend here, but it was raining like crazy, so we didn’t really experience the full course, so I think that was probably the only thing I was concerned about.
Swim
We swam as a team the day before to get our preview of the lake. Each time I’ve entered the open water I’m a little more and more comfortable each time, so by the time the actual horns sounded that morning, I wasn’t so nervous. It was a wave start, and I was calmly walking at the back of the pack until it was deep enough to dive in. It was an L shaped route – up, right for a long straightaway, short right, then right for another long stretch, then left back to shore. First half was a bit tough to get used to the rhythm, plus I couldn’t get it out of my head that there was so much more swim to go. “Where’s the next buoy?!?”. Once I rounded the corner for the turnaround, I had my rhythm and was able to swim back pretty nicely. Water was rough and choppy, and at one point there was a bunch of debris I guess from all the choppiness, but I eventually got past it. The last turn back to shore, I was pretty much swimming and smiling because I knew then and there, I was DONE (with the swim). Out of the water, I was celebrating as if I finished the whole race! Continue Reading
Back in March, the team went up to Lake San Antonio for our Wildflower Training Weekend. Remember that it was one tough weekend, rain, wind, cold – probably the worst camping experience I’ve ever had. Conditions were so bad that we had to modify the planned training bike and run routes for safety.
Last weekend the IronTEAM returned to Lake San Antonio with relatively much better conditions (no rain!). I carpooled with my teammate John W, headed out from the valley at 7:30am, and made it just in time to camp to set up our tents and join the team for a preview of the lake. When we got to the lake, we noticed how windy conditions were, so there was a little current in the lake with a little (actually a lot) of choppiness. We swam as a team with a nice easy pace to the first buoy about 100 yards. We hung out for a bit in the water getting some tips from our coaches, then we swam back. Continue Reading
Tonight I was wondering, “Just how far will 70.3 take me?”, so I fired up Google Maps, starting point Santa Monica, then dragged the destination to a familiar spot and 70.3 miles.
The last time I put on my wetsuit was my first open water ocean swim a few weeks ago in Santa Monica. Ever since then it’s only been pool swims. TNT rented the Hansen Dam in the San Fernando Valley for the LA tri teams (Eastside, Westside, and IronTEAMs) to practice. For some, it was their first time in open water. Luckily I had a few open water swims under my belt (Long Beach, Desert Tri, and Santa Monica ocean), so I was somewhat comfortable now. I did have the initial jitters because of the put excitement of it all, but hey, that’s what practice is for.
The plan was to circle the man-made lake four times going counter clockwise around 4 buoys for a total of 2000 yards. The first lap, as expected, as very rough for me as I didn’t really get a good rhythm. I also think that my wetsuit wasn’t properly tucked in, so my shoulders felt a little tight. Second lap was a little better, getting the hang of things. Most of the time, I had to keep a fresh open mind and not let distractions get to me (like the rest of my teammates more than halfway around the lap ahead of me, water getting into my goggles, swimcap getting uncomfortable), and just go with it. Once I had all that out of my mind, the last two laps seemed to go by very quickly! Sure, I zigzagged a bit, but I was happy I finished! After the swim, we changed out to do a six miler, which wasn’t too bad. It got a little hot near the end, but nothing we can’t handle.
We ended practice with a nice potluck picnic, where each team brought a certain type of food. Our IronTEAM resident baker, Holly baked up a pretty awesome Wildflower Nasty Grade themed cake, pictured above. There, our coaches went over more Wildflower specifics because this was our last weekend practice before the event. It’s gametime (soon)!!
The majority of time spent with the team is either swim practice or bike/run practices on weekends. Most of us don’t care if we even match clothing, if bike grease marks are on our hands, or even if our hair is fixed. Makeup? What makeup? We always have multiple layers of gear on from sunglasses to arm warmers to visors.
After 6 months of training we finally had a social event (outside of each other’s participant fundraisers) with the team, specifically a “send-off” event for our Wildflower fundraisers on their event. It was our first time in a non-race related event being outside of training clothes. What? Who are you again? Many were dressed up quite nicely, and needed a few seconds to recognize my own teammates! Being it was a Sunday afternoon, the bar practically to ourselves, it turned out to be a very fun event! Yes, we DO talk more than triathlon topics (although it’s difficult not to). Our social captain Kelly also put together a “TNT Bingo” game where it got everyone there to discover a little bit more info about our teammates. The afternoon lead to group shots, and mild craziness (I say mild because it was barely 7pm still).
